Funding for Small-scale Fisheries A Landscape Overview

This report examines support for small-scale fishery projects, and provides an overview of Rare's Fish Forever initiative.

Key findings include:

Funding from Foundations

-Between 2007 to 2015, we identified $91 million in grants directed towards small-scale fishing (SSF) projects. An additional $136 million in grants was directed towards projects that may be relevant for small-scale fisheries, but it is not clear from the grant description –most of these grants are for marine protected areas. In sum, this is ~$10-$23 million per year in grants to projects that are potentially relevant for SSF.

-Approximately 0.5% of all foundation grantmaking goes to marine conservation, and we estimate that between 5-12% of that is directed to SSF relevant projects.

Funding from DFI's

-Based on a review of the funding of seven major DFIs (World Bank, GEF, IADB, ADB, KfW, AfDB, and CAF) from 2000-2016, we identified $1.825 billion of investment in SSF related projects. An additional $4.351 billion was invested in projects that may be relevant for small-scale fisheries (e.g., coastal zone management). In sum this amounts to ~$107-$363 million per year of funding from these DFIs for projects that are potentially relevant for SSF.

-SSF related projects made up less than 0.5%on average of the DFI's portfolios.